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THE NEGRO QUESTION 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE WISCONSIN BAR ASSOCIATION 

BT 

MOORFIELD STOREY 

JUNE 27, 1918 



Ift 

flior 







/ 



.61 



/ 







THE NEGRO QUESTION. 



There are in this country to-day from ten to twelve 
millions of native Americans entitled under the Con- 
stitution and laws of the United States to every right 
that any American citizen enjoys and protected against 
hostile legislation in any State by the Fourteenth 
Amendment. Yet all over the country their rights are 
ignored and they are subjected to indignities of every 
kind, simply because they are Negroes. 

The Constitution expressly provides that the right of 
citizens to vote "shall not be denied or abridged 
... on account of race, color or previous con- 
dition of servitude." Yet in many States this pro- 
vision is set at naught. The Negroes have felt the 
murderous violence of the Ku Klux Klan, they have 
seen brutality followed by fraud when elections were 
carried by tissue-paper ballots, and the same results 
accomplished later by "grandfather clauses ,, and 
laws intended to enable election officers to reject 
their votes. We need not enumerate the methods 
for we all know that in the Southern States 
the Negro vote has been and is suppressed. This is 
admitted and justified by the Southern people. 

Negroes are denied the protection which the law af- 
fords the lives and property of other citizens. If only 
charged with crime or even misdemeanor, they are at 
the mercy of the mob and may be killed and tortured 
with absolute impunity. In many States they cannot 
obtain justice in the courts. At hotels, restaurants and 
theatres they are not admitted or are given poor accom- 
modation. In the public parks and public conveyances, 
even in the public offices of the nation, they are set apart 



from their fellow-citizens. The districts which they 
occupy in cities are neglected by the authorities, 
and of the money which the community devotes to edu- 
cation, a very small fraction is allotted to them, so 
that their sehoolhouses and their teachers are grossly 
inadequate. It is notorious that in many cities they are 
wretchedly housed and charged unreasonable rents for 
their abodes. Labor unions will not receive them as 
members, and as non-union men they find it hard to get 
employment. If in spite of every obstacle they gain 
an education, they find door after door closed to them 
which would have opened to receive them gladly had 
their skins been white. The deliberate effort is made 
to stamp them as inferior, to keep them "hewers of 
wood and drawers of water," to deny them that oppor- 
tunity to rise which America offers to every other citi- 
zen or emigrant no matter how ignorant or how de- 
graded. These are the unquestionable facts, and they 
are not controverted. 

Let me give you some testimony from the South. Says 
the Atlanta Constitution: — 

"We must be fair to the Negro. There is no use 
in beating about the bush. We have not shown this 
fairness in the past, nor are we showing it to-day, 
either in justice before the laws, in facilities af- 
forded for education, or in other directions." 

Some years ago a Mississippi lawyer addressing the 
Bar Association of that State said: — 

"A Negro accused of a crime during the days of 
slavery was dealt with more justly than he is to- 
day? . . . It is next to an impossibility to con- 
vict even upon the strongest evidence any white 
man of a crime of violence upon the person of a 
Negro . . . and the converse is equally true 
that it is next to an impossibility to acquit a Negro 
of any crime of violence where a white man is con- 
cerned," 



5 

and well did he add, 

"We cannot either as individuals, as a country, 
as a State, or as a nation continue to mete out one 
kind of criminal justice to a poor man, a friendless 
man, or a man of a different race, and another kind 
of justice to a rich man, an influential man, or a 
man of our own race without reaping the conse- 
quences." 

From the Vicksburg Herald come these words: — 

"The Herald looks with no favor upon drafting 
Southern Negroes at all, believing they should be 
exempt in toto because they do not equally 'share 
in the benefits of government.' To say that they 
do is to take issue with the palpable truth. 'Taxa- 
tion without representation,' the war-cry of the 
Revolutionary wrong against Great Britain, was 
not half so plain a wrong as requiring military 
service from a class that is denied suffrage and 
which lives under such discriminations of inferi- 
ority as the 'Jim Crow' law and inferior school 
equipment and service." 

One might criticise such an utterance as intended to 
encourage resistance to conscription by the Negroes, 
or might imagine that the writer from these premises 
would argue against the "wrong" which he recognizes. 
Alas, no. His argument is that the wrong must be made 
permanent and the conscription of Negroes abandoned 
because it makes the wrong too apparent. He says, 
"Drafting Negroes as soldiers is a gross travesty and 
contradiction of the color-line creed," and rather than 
abandon that creed he would deprive his country in 
this terrible crisis of all the soldiers which twelve mil- 
ions of people are ready and anxious to supply. 

If we ask what is done for education, the report of 
a careful investigation published by the Bureau of 
Education in the Department of the Interior is melan- 
choly reading. It gives the facts as to the 16 Southern 
States, the District of Columbia and Missouri, in which 



6 

the population contains a considerable portion of Ne- 
groes, and states that in 15 States and the District of 
Columbia "for which salaries by race could be obtained" 
the figures showed an expenditure of "$10.32 for each 
white child and $2.89 for each colored child." The 
conditions are even worse than these figures indicate, 
for, as the report states, "the per capita expenditure 
for Negro children is higher in the border States, where 
the proportion of colored people is relatively small and 
the proportion for colored high schools is better." The 
more numerous the Negroes the smaller is the provision 
for their education. A table in the report shows that 
in the counties where the percentage of Negroes in the 
population is less than 10 per cent., the per capita ex- 
penditure for white and colored is nearly equal. It 
evidently does not pay to maintain separate schools. 
Where, however, the percentage of Negroes is between 
50 and 75 per cent, the expenditure for the whites is 
$12.53 per capita and for the colored $1.77, while where 
the percentage exceeds 75 per cent, the expenditure for 
the whites is $22.22 and for the Negroes only $1.78 per 
capita. 

The results may be imagined, and we cannot be sur- 
prised at the testimony which the same report gives 
from competent witnesses. I quote: — 

"The supervisor of white elementary rural schools 
in one of the States recently wrote concerning the 
Negro schools : — 

" 'I never visit one of these [Negro] schools with- 
out feeling that we are wasting a large part of this 
money and are neglecting a great opportunity. The 
Negro schoolhouses are miserable beyond all de- 
scription. They are usually without comfort, equip- 
ment, proper lighting, or sanitation. Nearly all of 
the Negroes of school age in the district are crowded 
into these miserable structures during the short 
term which the school runs. Most of the teachers 
are absolutely untrained and have been given cer- 



tificates by the county board, not because they have 
passed the examination, but because it is necessary 
to have some kind of a Negro teacher. Among the 
Negro rural schools which I have visited, I have 
found only one in which the highest class knew 
the multiplication table.' 

"A State superintendent writes: — 

" 'There has never been an}^ serious attempt in 
this State to offer adequate educational facilities 
for the colored race. The average length of the 
term for the State is only four months ; practically 
all of the schools are taught in dilapidated churches, 
which, of course, are not equipped with suitable 
desks, blackboards, and the other essentials of a 
school; practically all of the teachers are incompe- 
tent, possessing little or no education and having 
had no professional training whatever, except a 
few weeks obtained in the summer schools; the 
schools are generally overcrowded, some of them 
having as many as 100 students to the teacher; 
no attempt is made to do more than teach the chil- 
dren to read, write, and figure, and these subjects 
are learned very imperfectly 



> }y 



But more dangerous and more wicked than neglect 
is the barbarous cruelty of lynching. I need not revive 
the figures of the past. What has happened within a 
year is enough. Since the United States entered the war 
a careful investigation shows that 219 Negro men, 
women and children have been killed and lynched by 
mobs in addition to two white men, one of these being 
Robert Prager. Four Negroes were lynched in Ala- 
bama, 2 in Arkansas, 1 in Florida, 7 in Georgia, 1 in 
Kentucky, 11 in Louisiana, 3 in Mississippi, 1 in North 
Carolina, 2 in Oklahoma, 2 in South Carolina, 5 in 
Tennessee, 9 in Texas, 3 in Virginia, 1 in West Virginia, 
and 1 in Wyoming. In addition to these cases 175 men, 
women and children were tortured, burned and killed 
at East St. Louis in July, 1917, and three Negroes were 
killed by a mob at Chester, Pennsylvania, in September, 



8 

1917.* Since 1885 between 3,000 and 4,000 cases of lynch- 
ing have been reported, and in only three instances does 
investigation show that any lyncher was punished. In 
two of these cases the victim of the mob was white. In 
the third case, that of a particularly atrocious murder 
of a Tennessee farmer and his two daughters, the lynch- 
ers were two young and friendless white boys. 

That you may realize what lynching is, let me give 
you instances. Dyersburg in Tennessee is a prosperous 
town of some 7,500 people, the county seat and a repre- 
sentative community of the better class. In this town 
on Sunday morning, December 2, in a lot the corner 
of which adjoins the public square, and which is within 
a stone's throw of two churches and the residences of 
several ministers, as well as of the mayor of the town, 
while the people of Dyersburg surrounded the scene, 
watched all that occurred and approved, since no 
protest was made, a Negro was thus dealt with : — 

"The Negro was seated on the ground and a 
buggy-axle driven into the ground between his legs. 
His feet were chained together, with logging chains, 
and he was tied with wire. A fire was built. Pokers 
and flat-irons were procured and heated in the fire. 
It was thirty minutes before they were red-hot. 

"His self-appointed executors burned his eyeballs 
with red-hot irons. When he opened his mouth 
to cry for mercy a red-hot poker was rammed down 
his gullet. Red-hot irons were placed on his feet, 
back and body, until a hideous stench of burning 
human flesh filled the Sabbath air of Dversburg. 

"Thousands of people witnessed this scene. They 
had to be pushed back from the stake to which the 
Negro was chained. Roof-tops, second-story win- 
dows and porch-tops were filled with spectators. 

* Since this address was written, and between May 15 and June 2 last, 
three colored men and one woman were lynched in Georgia for alleged com- 
plicity in a murder, one has been lynched and his body burned in Tennessee, 
the whole colored population of the town being forced to witness the burning, 
and a mother and her five sons have been shot to death in Texas on account 
of an altercation between one of them and a white man, the woman's daugh- 
ter also being fatally wounded. 



Children were lifted to shoulders, that they might 
behold the agony of the victim. 

"A little distance away, in the public square, 
the best citizens of the county supported the burn- 
ing and torturing with their near-by presence." 

The Memphis News-Scimitar thus describes the scene : 

"Not a domino hid a face. Every one was un- 
masked. Leaders were designated and assigned 
their parts. Long before the mob reached the city 
the public square was choked with humanity. All 
waited patiently. Women, with babies, made them- 
selves comfortable. 

"At last the irons were hot. 

"A red streak shot out; a poker in a brawny 
hand was boring out one of the Negro's eyes. The 
Negro bore the ordeal with courage, only low moans 
escaping him. Another poker was working like 
an auger on the other orbit. 

"Swish. Once, twice, three times a red hot iron 
dug gaping places in Lation Scott's back and sides. 

" 'Fetch a hotter one,' somebody said. The ex- 
ecution went on. 

"Now some one had another poker — jabbing its 
fiery point into the ribs of the doomed black. 

"Then rubbish was piled high about the agonized 
body, squirming beneath its load. 

"More and more wood and rubbish were fed the 
fire, but at three o'clock Lation Scott was not dead. 
Life finally fled at four o'clock. 

"Women scarcely changed countenance as the 
Negro's back was ironed with the hot brands. Even 
the executioners maintained their poise in the face 
of bloody creases left by the irons, — irons which 
some housewife had been using. 

"Three and a half hours were required to com- 
plete the execution." 

We cannot but wonder whether on that Sunday morn- 
ing, in the shadow of the churches, any of the respectable 
church-going citizens of Dyersburg who witnessed these 
horrors remembered the immortal words, "Inasmuch as 



10 

ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these least, 
ye did it unto Die." 

At Estill Springs in Tennessee a Negro charged with 
killing two white men was in like manner tortured and 
burned alive. The Chattanooga Times thus describes 
what occurred : — 

"Jim Mcllherron, the Negro who shot and killed 
Pierce Rodgers and Jesse Tigert, two white men, 
at Estill Springs, last Friday, and wounded Frank 
Tigert, was tortured with a red-hot crowbar and 
then burned to death here to-night at 7.40 by twelve 
masked men. A crowd of approximately 2,000 per- 
sons, among whom were women and children, wit- 
nessed the burning. 

"Mcllherron, who was badly wounded and unable 
to walk, was carried to the scene of the murder, 
where preparation for a funeral P3 7 re was begun. 

"The captors proceeded to a spot about a quarter 
of a mile from the railroad station and prepared 
the death fire. The crowd followed and remained 
throughout the horrible proceedings. The Negro 
was led to a hickory tree, to which they chained him. 
After securing him to the tree a fire was laid. A 
short distance away another fire was kindled, and 
into it was put an iron bar to heat. 

"When the bar became red hot a member of the 
mob jabbed it toward the Negro's body. Crazed 
with fright, the black grabbed hold of it, and as it 
was pulled through his hands the atmosphere was 
filled witli the odor of burning flesh. This was 
the first time the murderer gave evidence of his 
will being broken. Scream after scream rent the 
air. As the hot iron was applied to various parts 
of his body his yells and cries for mercy could be 
heard in the town. 

"After torturing the Negro several minutes one 
of the masked men poured coal oil on his feet and 
trousers and applied a match to the pyre. As the 
flames rose, enveloping the black's body, he begged 
that he be shot. Yells of derision greeted his re- 
quest. The angry flames consumed his clothing 
and little blue blazes shot upward from his burning 
hair before he lost consciousness." 



11 

The example to these lynchers was set in Memphis, 
and I quote the following statement from Rt. Rev. 
Thomas F. Gailor, Episcopal Bishop of Tennessee, a 
Southern white man, who wrote in the Nashville 
Banner: — 

"I realize that it is futile to attempt by any writ- 
ten word to stem the tide of what seems to be the 
popular will; but a man can, at least, declare his 
abhorrence of such atrocities. 

"This kind of lynching seems to be becoming epi- 
demic in our State. About two years ago a Negro 
from Fayette County was lynched most barbarously 
near Memphis, and parts of his body, according to 
the newspapers, carried away as souvenirs. Many 
citizens of Memphis protested, but they were ig- 
nored. Last winter a Negro man near Memphis 
was burned at the stake, gasoline was poured over 
his body, and his head was cut off and taken through 
the city streets as a trophy. Last fall a Negro was 
burned to death in Dyersburg, and thousands of 
white people stood by and gloated over his agonies. 
And now, at Estill Springs, we have another burn- 
ing, where the white men in charge first tortured 
the miserable creature with a red-hot iron, 'to 
break his will,' while the victim, already shot nearly 
to death, with one eye hanging out, screamed for 
mercy, and a thousand white men, with hundreds 
of women and children, looked on and were not 
ashamed." 

These details are revolting, and you may ask me why 
I harrow you by reciting them. Because unless the 
hideous horror of the disease is brought home to you, 
you will not rouse yourselves to find the remedy. 

The massacre of St. Louis is fresh in your memories, 
and its horrors are well known at the South, as appears 
by the article in the Greenville News, published at 
Greenville, South Carolina, of all days on July 4, 
1917, under the title "The Banner Lynching": — 



12 

"Twenty Negroes have been killed, three hundred 
are injured, and more than one hundred and fifty 
of their homes have been burned. This was the 
work of a mob that showed no Negro mercy, that 
did not stop to discriminate between the good and 
the bad. All that could be caught were beaten, if 
not slain, and battered into pulp. White women 
caught Negro women and tore their clothes off, beat 
them and ran them away. As the Negroes ran out 
of their burning houses, fired by the mob, they were 
shot down like dogs. One thousand five hundred 
soldiers do not suffice to control the situation. Hun- 
dreds of Negroes, many of them carrying babies, are 
fleeing from their former homes. Five hundred of 
the mob are in jail. 

"The Memphis burning of a Negro at the stake, 
the Abbeville lynching of Crawford, seem insignifi- 
cant when compared with the East St. Louis sham- 
bles, when the streets ran red with Negro blood, 
when Negro women, innocent and unoffending, were 
brutally beaten, when Negro men were shot down 
for competing with white labor. ,, 

Pages could be filled with the agonizing details of 
these and similar atrocities. The governors of Tennes- 
see, Mississippi and Louisiana have been appealed to, 
but have refused to act, pleading a lack of power. In 
striking contrast has been the action taken by the Gov- 
ernors of Kentucky and both Carolinas, but in spite of 
their efforts the men who commit these crimes go free 
like the men who confessed that they murdered Prager. 
Coatesville in Pennsylvania, Springfield in Illinois the 
home of Abraham Lincoln, have witnessed scenes 
scarcely less atrocious, and, though the men who com- 
mitted these hideous crimes were well known and were 
in some cases indicted, not one was ever punished. The 
juries refused to convict. 

It is conceivable that in a country as large as ours 
ruffians might be found so degraded and ferocious as to 
commit these horrible crimes, but that no attempt should 



13 

be made to punish them, that respectable men and 
women should look on and let their children witness 
such horrors would be inconceivable were it not clearly 
true. The great body of the community approves or 
lynching- would stop. Men justify their treatment of 
the Negroes by saying that it is necessary "to preserve 
their civilization," while the editor of the Little Rock 
Daily News recently wrote that he considered white 
men "just a little lower than the angels" and the Negro 
"just a little higher than the brutes." What sort of 
"civilization" do such actions reveal, and who are the 
angels whom these white men so closely resemble? 

The excuse that such things are done to prevent crimes 
against women is without foundation. Let me answer 
it by Southern testimony. Dr. W. C. Scroggs of the 
Louisiana State University says : "Not only is lynching 
no preventive of crimes against women, but statistics 
prove that only one time in four are such crimes the 
cause of lynching. In 1915 only 16 per cent, of the 
persons lynched were charged with crimes against wom- 
anhood." I have emphasized the word "charged" for a 
charge is easily made and often falsely, as figures 
abundantly prove. In court the man who is charged 
is presumed to be innocent. To the mob the charge is 
proof of guilt. 

The figures for 1917 abundantly confirm Dr. 
Scroggs : — 

"Rape and attempted rape 11 

Murder 5 

Assault aud wounding 4 

Robbery and theft 6 

White women (intimacy, annoying, striking, entering room, 

etc. ) 7 

Race prejudice (refusing to give up farm, accidental killing) . . 2 

Opposing draft 1 

Resisting arrest 1 

Unreported 4 

Vagrancy, disputing 3 

Killed by mobs 178 

Total 222" 



14 

No saner words on the subject have been uttered than 
these which I quote from Henry Watterson : — 

"Lynching should not be misconstrued. It is not 
an effort to punish crime. It is a sport which has 
as its excuse the fact that a crime, of greater or less 
gravity, has been committed or is alleged. A lynch- 
ing party rarely is made up of citizens indignant 
at the law's delays or failures. It often is made 
up of a mob bent upon diversion, and proceeding in 
a mood of rather frolicsome ferocity, to have a 
thoroughly good time. Lynchers are not persons 
who strive from day to day toward social better- 
ment. Neither are they always drunken ruffians. 
Oftentimes they are ruffians wholly sober in so far 
as alcoholic indulgence is concerned, but highly 
stimulated by an opportunity to indulge in spec- 
tacular murder when there is no fear that the next 
grand jury will return murder indictments against 
them." 

This is the situation which confronts this country. 
We call it "The Negro problem," but it is not. The 
Negroes did not come to this country as voluntary emi- 
grants. We white men took them from their homes 
and brought them here to be our slaves. We held them 
in slavery for more than two centuries. We called 
them "chattels," we refused them all the rights of men 
and did our best to make them brutes. We were afraid 
to let them learn and we kept them ignorant, Their 
patience, their kindliness, their gentleness made all 
this possible. Had they been less patient, slavery would 
have perished at the outset. 

During the Civil War waged, at least after 1863. to 
free them, they showed a loyalty to their masters which 
is without a parallel in history. They tilled the soil 
and raised the crops which fed the Southern soldiers, 
who were fighting to keep them slaves. To their pro- 
tection these soldiers confided their wives and children, 
and, as a leading Southern gentleman said to me, "There 



15 

was not a single case in which this trust was betrayed," 
adding with tears in his voice, "There never was a 
better race than the Negroes." This shows how far 
they were from brutes. There were in the Confederate 
States nearly four million slaves, but, as Mr. Rhodes 
says, they "made no move to rise." In the graphic 
words of Henrv Gradv, "a thousand torches would have 
disbanded the Southern army, but there was not one." 

The Negroes had no voice in reconstruction, nor did 
they propose or in any way help to carry the amend- 
ments to the Constitution which secure their rights. We 
forget that Andrew Johnson reconstructed the Southern 
States on a white basis, and that legislatures of 
white men chosen by white votes at once passed laws 
which virtually re-established slavery. The amendments 
were adopted to save the country from such a calamity 
and to preserve forever the results of the war. The con- 
temporary records abundantly establish these propo- 
sitions. 

If in the first few years the Negroes made a foolish 
use of their newly acquired power, they acted under 
white leaders who led them wrong, and who were able 
to do so, because the men to whom for four years they 
had shown such unexampled loyalty refused to lead them 
right. At the worst they acted as people act who are 
ignorant and unfamiliar with the business of the gov- 
ernment. Who had kept them so ignorant and so unpre- 
pared to exercise their rights as men? Compare them 
with the Bolsheviki, or even with the French in 1789, 
and tell me that they suffer by the comparison. Com- 
pare their worst follies with the deeds of the Ku Klux 
Klan, or the atrocities of East St. Louis and Dyersburg, 
and you must admit that we white men, who for cen- 
turies have been civilized, can cast no stone against 
them. 

What is there, then, in the Negro which justifies or 
in any way excuses our treatment of his race? We 



16 

brought him here and we have governed him ever since. 
The conditions which exist are of our own creation. We 
have made the laws under which he lives ; we administer 
them. Save in a few States his vote is negligible. He 
has no representative in Congress or in executive office. 
He simply exists as God made him and as we have de- 
graded him. While we deny these millions of men their 
rights as citizens, we demand of them the fulfilment of 
all the obligations of citizens. We tax their property, 
and in this supreme crisis of the world's history we 
demand their lives. Our conscription law recognizes 
no distinction of color, and loyally they answer their 
country's call. 

They do not hold back or plot against the government 
as do the Sinn Feiners in Ireland, but now as always in 
our history they have been as ready to fight for their 
country as any white men. Let me give you the testi- 
mony of their Southern white neighbors. It is from 
the Charlotte (North Carolina) News that I quote: — 

"It is the marvel of the South, as it ought to be 
the admiration of the whole United States, that 
when the colored man in the hard stages of the war, 
through which we are beginning to pass, is being 
put to the test, he is measuring up to the full 
valuation of a citizen and a patriot. There has been 
nothing wanting about him. In every activity to 
which the mind of the country has been directed 
since it was committed by its great President to 
war, the Negro has fulfilled his obligation. 
There has not only been a total absence of re- 
sistance, but there has been, rather, a hearty re- 
sponse to every appeal of the government, a thor- 
ough fitting-in with every enterprise that had of 
necessity to be founded, first of all, upon a spirit 
of patriotism. These multiplied diversities need 
not be enumerated. What the colored man has done 
is made all the more glittering b} r what he has re- 
fused to do. His efforts and activities speak in 
terms of eloquence that become the despair of those 
who seek to portray them." 



17 

And to these words I add from the Charleston News 
and Courier the following: — 

"The Negroes have met the first test admirably. 
Both the drafted men and the Negro leaders of 
South Carolina have earned the commendation of 
them which is being freely voiced by white citizens 
everywhere. The leaders have realized, as it was 
hoped they would, that in a way their race is on 
trial. Evidently they are determined that it shall 
acquit itself well." 

Is there nothing in all this which touches the con- 
science of their countrymen, which appeals to their sense 
of justice? I put the question to you : Does it touch your 
consciences? 

It is a white man's problem which confronts us. The 
fault is in us, not in our colored neighbors. It is our 
senseless and wicked prejudice against our fellow-men 
which is the root of all our troubles. The question is, 
how can we make the white people of this country recog- 
nize the rights which they themselves have given to 
the Negro, how can we induce them to enforce the laws 
which they themselves have made for his protection, 
how persuade them to do him simple justice, how lead 
them to allow him equal opportunity, to educate the 
men of whose ignorance we complain, to set the Negro 
an example of civilization and not of worse than medi- 
aeval brutality, — in a word, to help the Negro up and 
not to beat him down. We can blame him for nothing, 
for we are responsible for him and his situation. Can 
we not make the American people feel how cruel, how 
wicked, how cowardly is their treatment of men who 
have never injured them, and who are in numbers and 
resources so much weaker? This is the question on the 
answer to which the future of this country in no small 
measure depends. For the crime of establishing and 
maintaining slavery the white people of this country 
paid bitterly by the sufferings, losses and demoraliza- 



18 

lion entailed by four years of civil war. We may well 
heed the words of Edmund Burke and "reflect seriously 
on the possible consequences of keeping in the hearts 
of your community a bank of discontent, every hour 
accumulating, upon which every company of seditious 
men may draw at pleasure." 

When the Irish troops were brought to London by 
James II., Macaulay tells us how they were regarded 
by the English : — 

"No man of English blood then regarded the abo- 
riginal Irish as his countrymen. They did not be- 
long to our branch of the great human family. They 
were distinguished from us by more than one moral 
and intellectual peculiarity. They had an aspect 
of their own, a mother tongue of their own. . . . 
They were therefore foreigners; and of all foreign- 
ers they were the most hated and despised ; the most 
hated, for they had during five centuries always 
been our enemies; the most despised, for they were 
our vanquished, enslaved, and despoiled enemies. 
. . . The Irish were almost as rude as the sav- 
ages of Labrador. [The Englishman] was a free- 
man ; the Irish were the hereditary serfs of his race. 
He worshipped God after a pure and rational fash- 
ion; the Irish were sunk in idolatry and super- 
stition ; . . . and he very complacently inferred 
that he was naturally a being of a higher order than 
the Irishman, . . . who were generally despised 
in our island as both a stupid and cowardly people." 

Could the most prejudiced white man use stronger 
terms to paint the inferiority of his colored neighbor? 
The Irish nation to-day is extremely prosperous, yet 
the memory of ancient wrongs coupled with the desire 
for greater political rights makes her a thorn in Eng- 
land's side, when England needs the loyal support of 
all her citizens. "England's extremity is Ireland's op- 
portunity" in bitter truth. W T e may well bear this ex- 
ample in mind, and remember how small a fraction of 
the English Empire is the discontented part of Ireland, 



19 

and how much this small discontent costs. We may well 
ask what is in store for us. If it cost us four years 
of civil war to hold some three or four millions of ig- 
norant Negroes in slavery, what mav it not cost us to 
trample upon the rights and feelings of twelve million 
freemen, constantly gaining in numbers and education, 
resources and self-respect ! These are questions for me 
and for you, as well as for every citizen of the United 
States. What are you doing to answer them? 

Men say that it is for the Southern States to deal 
with the situation, and that we must not interfere. So 
in 1850 they said that slavery was a Southern question 
and that none but Southern men could understand or 
deal with it. The Grand Army of the Republic living 
and dead, the soldiers' monuments in every town, the 
green graves in Southern and Northern land alike, bear 
witness to the falsity of the claim, and prove that the 
whole nation pays for the fault of any part. It was 
the blood of white men which was drawn by the sword 
to pay for the blood of black men drawn by the lash. 

You may say that this is a rhetorical answer. Let us 
turn to facts and figures. The Presidential election of 
1916 stirred the country deeply, and we may take the 
vote cast then to illustrate my point. Louisiana, Kansas 
and Mississippi are each entitled to 8 representatives 
in Congress, and must have therefore nearly equal pop- 
ulations. Ignoring the votes of the small parties, the 
people of Kansas cast 592.246 votes, the people of Loui- 
siana S6,341 votes, the people of Mississippi 81,675. 
More than half the people of the latter State are colored, 
and the proportion is nearly as large in Louisiana. 
South Carolina with 7 representatives cast 63,396 votes. 
Arkansas with the same representation 160,296, while 
Connecticut with only 5 representatives cast 206,300. 
About 9,000 votes elected a representative from South 
Carolina. A few more than 10,000 chose one in Lou- 
isiana and Mississippi, if all the votes were cast for the 



20 

winning candidates, and as only 1,550 Republican votes 
were cast in South Carolina, 4,253 in Mississippi and 
6,466 in Louisiana, they do not seriously affect my point. 
In Kansas about 74,030 persons on an average voted for 
each representative, and the delegation was divided, 3 
Republicans and 5 Democrats. Similar comparisons 
might be made between other States with like results. 

We should not perhaps be so greatly concerned if 
these figures merely meant a lack of interest on the part 
of the voters. Their significance lies in the fact that 
there was in the Southern States no conflict, for the rea- 
son that the Negro vote was suppressed. The Negroes 
are counted as voters in determining how many repre- 
sentatives the State shall have, but are not allowed to 
cast their own votes, so that each Democrat votes for 
himself and for one or more Negroes, and consequently 
exercises a much larger influence in the choice of Presi- 
dent and Congress than the voter in Wisconsin or Massa- 
chusetts. In the latter States the voter casts one ballot, 
in the Southern States he casts two or three in effect. 
Remembering how small is the majority in the House of 
Representatives, it is clear that the policy of the country 
on all important questions like the incidence of taxation, 
as well as the administration of the laws by which 
the taxes are collected, is determined by men who cast 
votes which they have no right to cast. Men say that 
"the South is in the saddle'' and the political situation 
which that phrase describes is due to the suppression of 
the Negro vote. If the Negroes were not counted in the 
basis of representation, or if they were allowed to vote 
freely, this situation would not exist. 

I am not concerned to consider whether the govern- 
ment which rests on a South thus made "solid" is good 
or bad. I dwell on the facts to make you see that the 
suppression of the Negro vote does concern you. It 
takes away a large fraction of your voting power, and 
if you care whether the administration is in Republican 



21 

or Democratic hands, or if you think it possible that 
cases may arise when issues must be decided which are 
vital to the country, you must realize that a situation is 
dangerous where large bodies of citizens can cast votes 
to which they are not entitled, — when one man's vote 
counts two or three times as much as another's. 

How is it with the Southern States themselves? Ask 
their wise men whether the present condition places 
the fittest citizens in power, ask them what its effect 
is on the political life of the community, and they will 
tell you that it is bad. Do not rely on the statements 
of men in office who owe their positions to the fact 
that the Negroes cannot vote. They of course speak 
well of the bridge which has carried them safely over. 
Ask men who have retired and are disinterested spec- 
tators, ask the men of affairs, ask the students of history, 
and if they answer fairly they will tell you that where 
there is only one party and no opposition in a free state, 
its government will not continue to be good; that where 
all great public questions are decided not upon their 
merits but according to a single prejudice, they cannot 
be decided wisely; and that where a whole community 
combines to perpetrate or tolerate injustice upon any 
class of citizens or even upon a single man, no citizen's 
rights are safe, for every man's sense of justice is 
blunted, and he who rides to power on one prejudice to- 
day may be the victim of another prejudice to-morrow. 
The attempt to punish Dreyfus for a crime he did not 
commit, supported though it was by the highest officials 
and the strongest influences in France, nearly overthrew 
the republic. We may take warning from that lesson. 
It is still as true as when the ancient statesman uttered 
it that "only that government is good where an injury 
to the meanest citizen is regarded as an injury to the 
State." 

The suppression of the Negro vote injures the whole 
country, and we must all recognize this and insist that 



22 

no man shall east the ballot which belongs to another, 
and that the right of every citizen to cast his own vote 
shall be secure. 

Does not the lack of education concern us? Can a 
country have a better asset than a body of well-educated 
citizens? Have we such a superfluity of labor, is our 
business future so assured, that we can afford to throw 
away competent men? Even if men are only to be used 
for cannon fodder, they need education to be good sol- 
diers. Without it — 

(1) They cannot sign their names. 

(2) They cannot read their orders posted daily 
on the bulletin-board in camp. 

(3) They cannot read their manual of arms. 

(4) They cannot read their letters or write home. 

(5) They cannot understand the signals nor fol- 
low the signal corps in time of battle. 

We may well be ashamed to think that out of the many 
thousand Negroes who are enlisted in our ranks and 
ready to die for us "many cannot even Avrite a letter to 
their anxious mothers at home, so little training have 
they had in the schools of their country." 

As in the human body a diseased part infects the 
whole, so in the body politic an ignorant and degraded 
bod}' of citizens is a menace to the State. Such a class 
is bad company for its neighbors, its habitations are 
breeding-places for pestilence which easily spreads from 
the hovel to the palace, they are also sources of moral 
infection which spreads even more readily, and they 
offer retreats for criminals of every kind. They are in 
fact the bases for hostile raids by enemies of the 
community. 

The Report on Negro Education to which reference 
has already been made Avell says: — 

"However much the white and black millions may 
differ, however serious may be the problems of sani- 
tation and education developed by the Negroes, the 



23 

economic future of the South depends upon the ade- 
quate training of the black as well as the white 
workman of that section. The fertile soil, the mag- 
nificent forests, the extensive mineral resources, and 
the unharnessed waterfalls are awaiting the trained 
mind and the skilled hand of both the white man 
and the black man." 

The open letter by the Southern University Race Com- 
mission, from which the following passage is quoted, 
has been called "the most clear-cut statement in favor 
of the education of the Negroes that has been issued 
by any body of Southern white men." It says:— 

"The solution of all human problems ultimately 
rests upon rightly directed education. In its last 
analysis education simply means bringing forth all 
the native capacities of the individual for the bene- 
fit both of himself and of society. It is axiomatic 
that a developed plant, animal, or man is far more 
valuable to society than an undeveloped one. It is 
likewise obvious that ignorance is the most fruitful 
source of human ills. Furthermore it is as true 
in a social as in a physical sense that a chain is no 
stronger than its weakest link. The good results 
thus far obtained, as shown by the Negro's progress 
within recent years, prompt the commission to urge 
the extension of his educational opportunities. 

"The inadequate provision for the education of 
the Negro is more than an injustice to him ; it is an 
injury to the white man. The South cannot realize 
its destiny if one-third of its population is unde- 
veloped and inefficient. For our common welfare 
we must strive to cure disease wherever Ave find it, 
strengthen whatever is weak, and develop all that is 
undeveloped. The initial steps for increasing the 
efficiency and usefulness of the Negro race must 
necessarily be taken in the schoolroom." 

There is no answer to the question which Carl Schurz 
put to the Southern States, — 

"How can you expect to succeed in competition with 



24 

neighboring communities if it is your policy to keep 
your laborers ignorant and degraded when it is their 
policy to educate and elevate theirs?" 

We are all interested in the prosperity of every com- 
munity in this country. Whatever helps one helps us 
all. It is not — it cannot be — a question which does not 
concern us whether education is given or denied to the 
Southern Negroes. 

How is it with lynching? Does not this affect us all? 

In the first place these horrors occur over a wide 
area. Pennsylvania and Illinois have furnished hideous 
examples as well as Georgia and Tennessee. While 
such crimes as these go unpunished and therefore evi- 
dently approved by public opinion, how can we denounce 
the cruelties of Germany? How do you suppose such 
things affect our country's reputation with really civil- 
ized nations? You can answer this question for your- 
selves if you will remember your boyish feelings about 
the North American Indians, who never did anything 
?nore cruel than these white Americans, or if you will 
imagine hearing that such things had been done in 
Turkey, or Russia, or by Germans in Belgium or Poland. 
We must end these horrors at home before we can attack 
others abroad. 

What are we doing? From the President of the 
United States down and by all great leaders of public 
opinion silence is maintained. When Prager was hung 
bv the mob the Attornev-General of the United States 
at once brought the case before the Cabinet, the whole 
influence of the Administration was used to stir the 
authorities of Illinois to action and they responded. 
The prosecution failed because the jurymen did not 
realize what they were doing, but it was made clear that 
the Government condemned the act. When, however, 
Dyersburg and Estill Springs stain our good name only 
a few voices of little authority are raised in protest, 
and no attempt is made to punish the criminals. Col- 



25 

lege festivals come and go, but what college president, 
what orator at Commencement, takes the evil of lynch- 
ing as his subject. The universal silence disgraces us 
more than the acts themselves. The lynchers are ruf- 
fians and act as such, but the silent statesmen, clergy- 
men and scholars are the best men in the country. 

If the effect on the country's good name is bad, what 
think you is the effect on ourselves? What education 
are the children getting whose mothers take them to 
witness such barbarities, and whose fathers hold them 
up that their view may be uninterrupted? These children 
will govern this country in a few years, and how will 
they govern it? A community so brutalized as those com- 
munities must be where the men are thus tortured is a 
bad neighbor. We do not let our little children torture 
animals, for we know that the practice of cruelty de- 
praves those who are guilty of it. Why are we silent 
when whole communities are thus degraded? If they 
were threatened with the destruction of property by 
conflagration or flood, we should rush to help them. 
Barbarism is a worse foe than flood or fire. It is a pesti- 
lence whose spread is not recognized until it breaks out 
in such horrors as that of East St. Louis. Should we 
not help them to stay its ravages? 

Cannot you realize that your own house is on fire? 
Attorney-General Gregory in addressing the^executive 
committee of the American Bar Association in May 
said: — 

"We must set our faces against lawlessness within 
our borders. Whatever we may say about the 
causes for our entering this war, we know that one 
of the principal reasons was the lawlessness of the 
German nation — what they have done in Belgium, 
and in Northern France, and what we have reason 
to know they would do elsewhere. For us to toler- 
ate lynching is to do the same thing that we are 
condemning in the Germans. Lynch law is the 
most cowardly of crimes. 



26 

"Invariably the victim is unarmed, while the men 
who lynch are armed and large in numbers. It is 
a deplorable tiling under any circumstances, but 
at this time above all others it creates an ex- 
tremely dangerous condition. I invite your help 
in meeting it. 

"The two excuses usually given are that there are 
no adequate laws and that the laws we have are 
not properly enforced. The people of this country 
must be given to understand that we have means 
of protecting those in the field and those at home 
and what is being done to accomplish that result. 

"I urge you through such machinery as you see 
fit to adopt to assist in getting before the people 
of this countrv the facts that laws are now on the 
statute books or will be within a few weeks which 
will reasonably protect the interior defences of 
our country, that an honest, adequate and earnest 
force is dealing with this situation ; and that unless 
the hysteria which results in the lynching of men 
is checked it will create a condition of lawlessness 
from which we will suffer for a hundred years." 

He had in mind the case of Prager, but what he said 
applies with even greater force to the lynching of Ne- 
groes, and it is absolutely true. Lawlessness is a dis- 
ease which spreads rapidly and insidiously. You have 
not forgotten the night-riders of Kentucky who terror- 
ized large parts of the State and paralyzed the adminis- 
tration of the law for a considerable time. Their efforts 
were intended to prevent their neighbors from selling 
tobacco at prices and to a customer that they did not 
approve, — in a word, from exercising their unquestion- 
able right to deal as they would with their own prop- 
erty. You must remember also the trials at Indian- 
apolis and Los Angeles which showed that the leaders 
of labor unions had been engaged in a gigantic con- 
spiracy to promote their objects by blowing up factories, 
bridges, buildings and newspaper offices, causing enor- 
mous damage to property and more terrible danger to 



27 

human life. You have not forgotten the case of Leo 
Frank in Georgia taken from the State Prison and 
lynched though he had been duly convicted and im- 
prisoned according to law. The Georgia mob blamed 
the Governor for commuting his sentence from death 
to imprisonment and therefore killed Prank. The lynch- 
ers were known and might have been prosecuted, but 
they were set free, while the Governor who commuted 
the sentence was threatened with being lynched him- 
self. You read in the newspapers every little while that 
some man has been tarred and feathered or otherwise 
abused because he has not bought as many Liberty Bonds 
as some of his neighbors think he ought to have bought. 
Criticism of the Government is attended to-day with 
great risks even in the courts, where extraordinary sen- 
tences are imposed for the expression of unpopular 
opinions. The mob is waiting in all these cases and, 
ignorant of the facts, asserts its own standard of pa- 
triotism or generosity, any deviation from which is 
punished by death without trial. 

When this war is over we know that contests between 
employer and employee are certain, and the air is full 
of wild claims made by the Bolsheviki and their con- 
geners all over the world. Such periods of readjust- 
ment as that which awaits this nation are always dan- 
gerous, and if lynchers go unpunished we may find their 
methods employed against the capitalists who excite 
their wrath, the courts and the public officers who 
stand in the way of what the mob of the moment de- 
sires, and even counsel may share the fate of their 
clients. Lawyers have never been very popular since 
the days of Jack Cade, and many ruffians believe witli 
him that they should all be hanged. When the Mis- 
souri Compromise was repealed, Charles Sumner warned 
the Senate of the United States that they were sowing 
dragon's teeth which in time would arise as armed 
men. Four years of civil war proved him a true prophet. 



28 

We are repeating the sowing, and the crop is just as 
sure. Believe me, the dangers which threaten our civil- 
ization from lawlessness are greater and far more real 
than any which Prussian soldiers can inflict. 

I have come half across the continent to see if I 
cannot make you realize the situation and stir some of 
you at least to action. We are lawyers, who more than 
any other men are bound to support the law. We under- 
stand what lawlessness means and what its dangers 
are. The men in the communities where lynchings 
occur, who are silent, must confess either that they 
approve the crimes or are too cowardly or too selfish 
to make a public protest. The ruffians are essentially 
weak — they are cowards, or they w T ould not treat as they 
do their helpless victims. Public opinion, the strongest 
force in any country, once aroused and expressed would 
stop these outrages. There is no man in this country, 
North or South, in Massachusetts and Wisconsin as 
well as in Louisiana or Mississippi, who is not bound 
to help rouse this public opinion. If we are silent we 
also must admit that we are cowardly or indifferent, 
or that we approve. Either attitude should be impos- 
sible. Let us speak out and keep speaking out until 
our condemnation is felt by every community, and the 
men who now commit these hideous barbarities learn 
from what we say that this country cannot tolerate 
them. The enforcement of the law by the constituted 
authorities would frighten the perpetrators. Are they 
afraid to do their duty? If so, the community must give 
them courage or elect better men. If they dread the 
loss of office, make them realize that the law-abiding 
citizens have more votes than the criminal classes, and 
that they will not forgive neglect of duty. 

We are asking our Negro fellow-citizens to give their 
lives to their country. Such arguments as I have quoted 
from the Vicksburg Herald might well have made them 
hesitate, but with cheerful readiness and loyalty they 



pD 1.0.4 



29 



have come forward at our call. They have been met 
with jeers from many quarters, with insults, with the 
suggestion from high officers that they should not ex- 
ercise their legal rights for fear of exciting unjust race 
prejudice, with proposals that they should serve as la- 
borers and not as soldiers, but notwithstanding all these 
things they have never failed or faltered. They are men 
with feelings and ambitions like our own. Do you think 
they do not realize the contrast between Houston and 
East St. Louis? Of the occurrences at the latter the 
Grand Jury after investigation said: — 

"East St. Louis was visited by one of the worst 
race riots in history, a siege of murder, brutality, 
arson and other crimes, hitherto of such a loath- 
some character as to challenge belief. After hear- 
ing all evidence we believe the riots — at least the 
occurrences which led up to them — were deliber- 
ately plotted." 



At Houston no one who reads the evidence can doubt 
that the Negroes were stung into action by great provo- 
cation. Here are the comparative figures : — 



Houston 

17 white persons killed. 
13 colored soldiers hanged. 
41 colored soldiers imprisoned 
for life. 

4 colored soldiers imprisoned. 

5 colored soldiers under sen- 

tence of death ; temporarily 

reprieved by President. 
40 colored soldiers on trial for 

life. 
White policeman who caused the 

riot not even indicted. 
No white army officers tried. 
(Military law.) 



East St. Louis 

125 Negroes killed. 

10 colored men imprisoned for 

fourteen years. 

4 white men imprisoned four- 

teen to fifteen years. 

5 white men imprisoned five 

years. 

11 white men imprisoned under 

one year. 

18 white men fined. One col- 
ored man still on trial for 
life. 

17 white men acquitted. 
(Civil law.) 



How does the contrast affect you? 
our colored fellow-citizens? 



How must it affect 



30 

We owe it to them — we owe it to ourselves — that 
while they are giving their lives abroad to make the 
world safe for democracy we should do our part to make 
this country safe for their kindred at home, or, to quote 
a better phrase, we should "make America safe for 
Americans." 

Upon me, upon all of you, rests the clear duty of 
helping create the public opinion which will accomplish 
this end. The time has been when in Wisconsin regard 
for human rights and determination that they should 
be respected animated this people, when they followed 
leaders who really believed in the principles proclaimed 
in the Declaration of Independence, when in their zeal 
they even defied the Supreme Court of the United States. 
May I express the hope that this faith is not dead and 
that the cause which I am advocating may find here 
leaders and friends? 









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